Electronic devices may be used in many types of systems and/or applications, such as control systems, data processing systems, medical systems, telecommunication systems and/or communication networks. Electronic devices may include system controllers, servers and/or data acquisition systems, medical imaging systems, central office systems, and/or network devices, such as routers, switches, firewalls, and/or network address translators. For some applications it may be desirable to make electronic devices scalable to accommodate new application requirements. For example, a communication network may be expanded to accommodate new users, modified to accommodate new networking protocols and/or types of data traffic, and/or may be reconfigured in response to network attacks and/or natural disasters.
Scalable electronic devices may be designed to accommodate certain changes. For instance, an electronic device may be configured to include a chassis that accepts removable cards to provide flexibility for accommodating new application requirements. A card may include any device capable of receiving data from another device and/or capable of making data available to another device. Implementations of cards may take the form of removable cards or boards that are configured and adapted for use in an electronic device.
An electronic device may include one or more chassis slots for accepting a removable card having a first size, such as a full sized card, and may include one or more slots for accepting a removable card having a second size, such as a half-height card. An electronic device having the above configuration may provide adequate flexibility in certain situations; however, in other situations the scalability of the electronic device may be inadequate. For example, if accommodating a new application requirement, such as an upgrade, requires a number of half-height cards that exceeds the number of half-height slots, a new electronic device enclosure and/or chassis may be required to deploy the additional capability. Installing a new enclosure/chassis may result in additional cost, additional cooling requirements, and/or additional space requirements. The new chassis may be required even though an existing enclosure/chassis is not fully utilized.